The Home of Visionary Artist Anado McLauchlin

By Lorenz Ray

The Los Angeles Times reported San Miguel folly Casa de Las Ranas to be “the happiest home in San Miguel.” The home of visionary artist Anado McLauchlin and his partner, art historian Richard Schultz, lives up to that description, and they happily add “outlandishly adorned ornament” to the mix. Joyce Wadler of the New York Times ascribed it as “a force”… and a force it is! Over the last thirteen-plus years they have been mischievously at work bringing together a spectacle of color, mosaic, unusual, and mundane found objects that Mr. McLauchlin confesses to be an eternal work in progress. The rooms throughout the house appear as rebellious testaments to the road less traveled. There is a poetic chaos that brings the levels of mirth to new heights. Continuous visits to the house have left the author amazed and wanting to go home and paint his walls. The house is filled with collections of whimsy from around the world, along with Anado’s fanciful mosaics and artwork…but that’s not all!

La Biblioteca House and Garden TourVisiting the home of Artist Anado McLauchlinSun, Dec 14, 12pmLeaving from La Biblioteca’s PatioInsurgentes 25US$20 or 230 pesos

Three years ago our bearded friends opened a gallery on their property, The Chapel of Jimmy Ray Gallery. The author Tom Robbins visited during its construction and exclaimed, “The rolling thunderclaps of visual excitement reached a crescendo of high magnitude at the Chapel of Jimmy Ray. What an eyeball-spinning carnival of divinely elevated kitsch!” The gallery compound is a site to behold, a fantastic gumbo of merry- making, using bottles as one of the primary building materials, mixed with a mosaic enthusiasm of blissful proportions. I am one the biggest fans of Anado and his team of craftsmen from the local indigenous community of Cieneguita. I highly recommend that you join La Biblioteca’s House and Garden Tour on Sunday, December 14 as it tours Casa de Las Ranas and the Chapel of Jimmy Ray Gallery—where every day is a holiday in “the happiest home in San Miguel”!